eBay triggers with Vivitar 283 & 285 - High Voltage = Danger?

Hi.<br />

I own a set of 5 radio triggers (gadgetinfinity & virtualvillage). <br />

I managed to put them working with my digital camera with 2 small flash units

from Promaster with low voltage. But now I want to try with Vivitar 283/285.

<br />

Some of the units have slow voltage (10 to 20v) but one of them has more than

300v and other, sometimes, shows a multimeter reading of 700v. <br />

My questions: <br />

1 - It's safe to connect the radio slaves directly to the high voltage Vivitars

I own? <br />

2 - Does the radio slaves suffer the same problem of the hotshoe of digital

cameras? (making them to "break" with the high voltage when the flash

fires?) <br />

3 - What is the procedure to know if I can connect the radio slaves directly to

the hotshoe of any flash (value of safe voltage of the flash?)? <br />

Thanks

check each flashs voltage with a volt meter. get rid of the HV models.

 

you will cetain damage the trip cercuit of any device if its too much voltage.

Hi the 283 and the 285 are fantastic guns don?t get rid they are as powerful as almost any shoe mount gun, I will sagest you buy some optical slaves for your hi voltage guns, I mix 3 eBay slaves with 3 optical slaves with I find trigger much more reliable when used with hi voltage guns as the slave use the sync voltage as a power sappily

The vivitar slave I use the model number is SL2 (or SL 2) for a eBay search and is the best I have used hope this helps Dave

Thanks for all answers. <br>

I forgot to tell that I want a system that can work with digital, or in other words, a system that could handle with the preflash from the digital cameras. <br>

A few months ago I didn't knew how flash works with digital.

<br>I used with digital the same optical slaves I used with film but the digital pictures came worst than without the optical slaves.

<br> The radio triggers only fires the flash when the transmitter says "do it"

i use a canon 20D with no probs with any trigers i have the raido transmitter on the hot shoe and a mix of optical and raido trigers on the flash guns you will only have proberlems with the optical triggers if you use the pop up flash or a camera mounted gun as the camera may fire a pre flash for metering and will set the optical trigers off befor the shutter opens hope this helps Dave

Well, even though this is over a year down the track, I thought I'd post my experiences here just incase anyone comes'a searching!

 

I bought a set of cheapo ebay triggers about six months ago, with two receivers. I use them with a Vivitar 283, and an old Starblitz of a similar power (perhaps a stop less). My 283 has high voltage at the contacts, so I was cautious about cooking the receiver, but after installing the battery and seeing that there was nothing irreplaceable inside (being a bit of an electronics geek, there are drawers full of all sorts in my work room) I just went for it. They have survived well, and still continue to be very reliable, best budget purchase I've made in a while.